Interaction Based Redirected Walking

Abstract

With a significant improvement in virtual reality (VR) devices, the number of interaction-based applications for consumers and industrial products is naturally increasing. As a result, many people can use VR in their homes or offices where they are limited by the physical tracking space. One way to overcome this limitation of natural walking is to use perception-inspired locomotion techniques such as redirected walking (RDW). RDW utilizes imperfections of human perception to introduce small changes like rotations or translations to steer the user away from the tracking boundaries. In this work we evaluate the detection threshold for discrete manipulation rotations to reorient the users in the scene during interactions. We show the thresholds of five most common interactions (Looking, Picking Up, Throwing, Shooting and Sword Fighting) that can be used as a distraction for RDW, which was confirmed in a user study. Based on the findings we propose a novel steer-to-action technique that helps game developers to improve VR games experiences.